


Patience

by qwanderer



Series: Pardicer [10]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Episode: s05e12 The White Rabbit Job, F/M, Multi, POV Parker, Some angst, canonical suicidal actions, not permanently tho, welp they're broken up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 16:38:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9450596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: When you're just trying to manipulate people's actions, they're like locks. Hit the right tumblers, strike the right balance, it all clicks. When you're trying to change how they think and feel...Trying to steer their little animal souls...There's claws and hissing and scrambling panic and sometimes blood.Parker doesn't know if she could face that.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Lots of stuff from The White Rabbit Job. I just... like stealing things :D
> 
> Some heavy stuff here.

Parker has to give Hardison extra kisses and Hardison has to give Parker extra snuggles but there's still a hollow place where Eliot kisses and Eliot snuggles once were. 

Parker once got angry at a client for looking like she might want to steal Hardison but she's learned, now, that people can't be stolen, not like that. 

Tabatha is not to blame for this. Parker knows this. 

Her little cat-heart still wants to claw her, wants to push things off of shelves and watch them shatter every time Eliot talks about her. 

* * *

Eliot is acting a little weird with the team recently and Nate has noticed. So of course, he pries. 

Of course, Parker listens. She loves the big vents Hardison built into the pub for her. 

"How was your trip out of town?" Nate asks. "Get done what you needed to get done?" 

"Nah," Eliot answers. "Timing didn't end up working out." 

Nate frowns in thought, then does one of his about-faces where he decides that line of questioning isn't profitable. 

"And your date with Tabatha? Things go well?" 

Eliot's mouth does a funny thing, not a frown or a smile or even quite a moue, although that's closest. "It was... it was nice," he answers. 

Nate raises his eyebrows. "Just nice?" he asks. 

Eliot shrugs. He looks a little sad, a little determined, a little hopeful. "Real change of pace," he says, "but sometimes it's good to slow down." 

It's nice to see Eliot having feelings. She has to spy on him for that, right now, though, if she wants to get anything real. 

* * *

Right now, with the team, on jobs, Eliot wears a mask. The hitter persona, and Parker recognizes it the way she remembers her thief-mask, the one she wore their first job together. 

She wore scary-crazy, to keep people away. Eliot's wearing crazy-scary, to keep them at a distance. To keep the work separate from who he is now. 

"We wreck the bad guys," he tells them, like violence is the only thought in his head. 

None of them believe his mask. But most of them at least respect the warning. 

Hardison, however... well, he calls Parker "Sexy stuff in the front row," presumably as opposed to the sexy stuff in the back row which is entirely composed of Eliot standing behind them menacingly. 

Eliot just shakes his head. 

Parker knows Hardison is trying to taunt Eliot, but that won't work. Eliot knows that they are there, that they want him, that he wants them. The problem isn't with that. The problem is that Eliot thinks he might want other things more. 

* * *

They plan the job like that, Hardison poking at Eliot and Parker doing her best not to and Eliot keeping his distance despite it all. 

Then the job is in motion, and Eliot is behind the wheel. 

Eliot pretends distraction by talking about the little town thing again. It's a lot on his mind right now. 

"...it's good to know that there's... uh... that these little towns like this Oxford place exist, man. I used to drive 18 up 35 from Dallas to Oklahoma City..." 

He continues to ramble, until the mark interrupts him, and he slams the brakes, and she throws herself against the hood of the car with a theatrical lack of grace. 

"What are you doing? That was _way_ too close." Eliot pulls her up, pats at her in concern, partly for the con, but, she thinks, partly for him. 

Not close enough, some part of her says. We don't kiss anymore. Parker doesn't need that. For now Parker just enjoys his touch, his concern. It's got an edge to it now, though, an unhappy edge. 

Eliot doesn't usually worry about whether Parker can pull off one of her stunts. And he's been training her, teaching her how to take an impact, take a fall. She knows it was close. She calculated it close. But she calculated it well. She doesn't have any desire to spend more time with things like _bed rest_ and _crutches_ and _physical therapy_. 

She wonders if Eliot thinks she's too sad to think clearly. She hasn't been in that place for a long time. Since the psychic, maybe. She doesn't venture out, when she feels like that. She hunkers down. She hides. 

She knows Eliot never hides, not physically. 

She wonders if this mess is hurting Eliot even more than it hurts them. 

* * *

Sophie gets so close to pulling off the White Rabbit. 

Parker wants to see it work but somewhere in herself, she doubts it can be done. 

How do you get someone to do what you want if what you want is for them to change their minds? 

Sometimes you can push, but sometimes pushing just doesn't work. Sometimes pushing just pushes people away. 

Stubborn humans. 

They change the plan. They bring Parker in for what should be a bit part, but he follows her, tries to drag her away, calls her Patience. 

Who the hell is Patience? 

They put him to sleep until they can figure it out. 

Parker stares down at the unconscious man. He misses someone. He needs to protect someone. She reminds him of them. He is vulnerable to her. She can't take her eyes away. 

Hardison pulls her away. 

How can they break into someone like this, without breaking him? She needs to know. 

Stubborn, soft, breakable humans. 

When you're just trying to manipulate people's actions, they're like locks. Hit the right tumblers, strike the right balance, it all clicks. When you're trying to change how they think and feel... 

Trying to steer their little animal souls... 

There's claws and hissing and scrambling panic and sometimes blood. She's only ever played this game with herself, inside her own heart, since she's already there, and knows it best. Sophie is brave to try and crawl inside someone else's mind, to confront their heart, when the panicked sharp little claws there could tear them both up into little pieces. 

Parker doesn't know if she could face that. 

* * *

They find out who Patience is. 

"It's a pretty big piece of information for you to completely miss!" Eliot is yelling. 

Sparks between Eliot and Hardison are flying hot and bright and dangerous. They can't touch, not the way they had been, so it's all turning to aggravation, anger. They're crumbling a little. 

Sophie looks surprised, distressed. She doesn't know, Parker realizes. She doesn't know that Eliot stepped back. She expected the team to be solid, for this. She expected them to hold together. 

They regroup. 

They find out that the doors are locked because of a woman with a face a little like hers. 

Sophie gives her a speculative look. 

Parker has a bad feeling that she is going to end up being the one who will need to crawl inside Charlie's head. 

* * *

Eliot's trying extra hard not to hurt anyone, these last couple of jobs, Parker can tell. He's been grifting, mainly. 

She can hear him over the comms, when security comes to investigate what's going on in the factory. Grifting with a desperate intensity. Hoping he doesn't have to fight today. 

He has to fight. He doesn't like it, though. 

He's whining at one of them, who has a gun, apparently, but there's no seriousness in Eliot's voice when he tells the person to hand it over. He's in no danger. 

Parker has to pay attention to her own part, now. The others can't reach her to help. 

Charlie is on the edge of the roof. He's coming apart at the seams. Parker watches, listens, tries to figure this out. 

"You don't look like you, nothing feels... solid." 

"They say you can't actually die in your dreams, you just... wake up." 

"I just want to wake up, Patience." 

He is hurting too much to be careful. He's in the most dangerous place. Driven to the edge, feeling wobbly, with no safety line. Nothing but her. 

Charlie is going to die unless she is brave enough to crawl inside his head, let him come so close they could hurt each other so easily with their sharp little claws. 

She studies him. Charlie's heart is like a cheetah, fast and ruthless and nervous and shy. 

She has to show herself, her own sleek housecat of a heart, how she's afraid all the time of the same things he's hiding from, of letting people down, of letting people fall. 

She thinks she can see the edges of how he feels, how it all looks from inside his head. This is one of those places. Everything's changing so fast and there are so many feelings and you just want them to stop so you can figure your shit out. 

(Hardison climbing out of a coffin and Eliot wrapping him up in strong arms and Parker feeling so much, too much, and needing to run away) 

She could maybe crawl inside that, help tame it, help bring it back from the edge. 

Parker's come so far in figuring her shit out, figuring out how to deal with feelings. The team helped. 

(Eliot helped her so much, knows so much about learning to feel and learning to deal and so sometimes she forgets to account for how much Eliot's still been changing and how much he maybe sometimes just wants things to stop) 

How do you make a scared little animal into a hungry little animal that will follow your lead? 

Offer it something good. 

"You don't understand. She was the only one who... I'm alone." 

She needs to be there, she needs to be out in the open and willing and free, like pretzels. 

She bares her heart, now, yells and yowls, and she knows all that is alive in her eyes, for this man to see. Because he needs to see it. 

"I don't understand? I had somebody! I lost someone once, okay? And I thought I was alone, too. But I wasn't." 

That's not exactly how it works, she knows - after her brother died she really was alone, for a long time, but now... 

Now she's lost someone in a different way, but it hurts just the same. Eliot's not dead, not gone forever, and she has the team. She feels like she's alone even though she knows she isn't, and that knowing, that's what he needs to hear about. 

"Your own people sent us because they care about you," she tells him. 

"I just - I just wanted to make things." 

Oh. 

How do you make a terrified heart into a heart that wants what you set in front of it? Find what that heart yearns for, find its passion, and give that passion a place. 

"It's your life, Charlie, it's your choice - make something." 

She can't be exposed to the sky like this any more. She stalks off, away, across the roof. 

And - _good_ cat - he follows. 

* * *

Eliot isn't so simple, she knows. Things are complicated for Eliot because he has ten passions for every day of the week, so many things he loves, so many things he wants to chase. Like a wolf puppy getting sidetracked by an interesting smell. 

Sophie's talking about how the White Rabbit works when she comes up to join the others. 

"Every grift is an exchange," she says. "The trick is to give the mark just enough, but not so much that you get pulled over with him." 

She talks from experience of changing hearts. 

Sophie is talking about Nate. Sophie has successfully run the White Rabbit. On Nate. 

She's pushed at his dreams, changed the way he feels, brought out the true him. Helped him plan for life, not just vengeance and the flashing rush of chess. 

Nate looks at her. "Parker, huh?" _You knew she could do this. The impossible._

"Parker," Sophie answers. 

They trust her with the most important parts of the jobs. 

"We good?" Parker asks. Is the team solid, did we do this right, without breaking anyone? 

"You tell us." 

Hardison is a solid warmth at her side. Parker looks to the other side, at Eliot. 

His eyes are still empty, but he's not broken. 

"Yeah," she says. "We're good." 

Parker is a thief but she can hit when she needs to and hack a little and she just grifted/masterminded the end of the White Rabbit con. 

On a stranger. 

Parker can do anything. 

She sneaks another look at Eliot. 

She can stop pushing. 

She can be patience. 

She can wait for Eliot to figure his shit out. 

She can coax him back, in time. 

* * *

Parker finds Eliot as he's prepping food in the pub kitchen, all by himself at the crack of dawn. 

"You know you can still be our friend, right?" she asks. 

He keeps his eyes on his prep, just breathes for a moment. "I'm sorry if I haven't been," he says. 

"No, don't be sorry," Parker tells him. "You just want things to make sense. Do whatever you need to do. But also, if you need help? We're here. We're right here. And we're not going to stop loving you either." 

Slowly, slowly, he smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> just for the record, my Hardison muse is somewhat frustrated that I wrote this whole fic and made no references either to "follow the white rabbit" or "who the hell is Bucky"
> 
> Hardison, The Winter Soldier hadn't come out yet then, 'kay? I couldn't have you referencing it. Sorry about the rabbit, though. You made a good Matrix. But none of you have rabbit hearts.


End file.
